In October 1967, Israel's largest warship provoked wantonly outside the Egyptian port of Said, and suddenly, two Egyptian missile boats fired four Styx missiles at the Israeli warship, sinking it on the spot, killing 47 Israeli troops!
After the third Middle East war in 1967, Israel sent the country's largest ship to Egypt to provoke, unexpectedly, Egypt directly threw 4 missiles, with a series of loud noises, the ship, sunk...
Egypt launched the "Styx" anti-ship missile from the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union and the United States competed for the Middle East and exported a large number of "Styx" missiles with the friendly country "United Arab Republic".
The "Arab League" was formed after the union of Syria and Egypt, and although Syria became independent in 1961, Egypt continued to use the name until 1971.
When receiving the "Mosquito" missile boat equipped with the "Styx", the Egyptian side was very dissatisfied, saying that this thing "always has problems", and the Soviet side found that their staff could not operate it.
This is not that the Soviets slandered the Egyptians, and the Egyptian side can hardly be described in words. For example, Egyptian soldiers often complain about "malfunctions" when using radars, when in fact they do not turn on some important switches at all.
Because the Egyptian side has a severe punishment mechanism, if the equipment is damaged because of the soldier's problem, it will be directly executed, and the Egyptian soldiers have to push the accident to the equipment in order to save their lives.
It is precisely because of this influence that the Egyptians underestimated the influence of anti-ship missiles and did not believe that such "gadgets" could cause great damage to ships. When the third Middle East war began, the Egyptians were very cautious about dispatching missile boats, and even Israel underestimated the combat effectiveness of anti-ship missiles, paying attention to it, but not paying special attention to it.
On June 5, Israel sent a destroyer and three torpedo boats to blockade Port Said, only to find that there were no warships in the port.
On 12 June, Israel took full control of the Sinai Peninsula, and the country's largest destroyer, HMS Eilat, escorted by two Tsar torpedo boats, came to the waters northeast of Port Said. The Egyptians sent torpedo boats to attack them, but they were defeated and almost completely destroyed.
This made Israel even more contemptuous of the Egyptians and no longer take anti-ship missiles to heart.
Although the third Middle East war ended quickly, relations between Egypt and Israel remained tense. On 21 October, the destroyer Eilat was detected at a radar station near Port Said.
It happened that two "Mosquitoes" were patrolling the vicinity, and although the "Eilat" saw them, it did not take them seriously, believing that the Egyptians had no combat effectiveness at all.
In fact, when the "mosquito" received the order to attack, the crew hurriedly drove the boat to the target site, and after reaching the missile range, they even felt "very difficult" to lock on to the target, and it took 16 minutes to successfully launch the missile, and at the same time, the ship almost hit the docking pontoon of a large freighter.
The fire of the "Styx" was very large, and although the Israelis noticed this "strange thing", they could not react at the first time, and did not start firing into the air until the missile was 9600 meters away, but it was too late.
With a violent explosion, the second half of the "Eilat" was shattered.
As soon as this missile exploded, another followed.
"Boom!"
This shot also caused great damage to the Eilat, but did not sink it, and an hour later, the Egyptian navy ordered the missile boat to fire two more missiles at it.
This time, the 1710-ton destroyer was completely destroyed and sunk into the sea. A total of 47 Israelis were killed and 91 injured.
It can be said that this small-scale naval battle completely changed the world's naval history.
